Welcome to Hyperion Records, an independent British classical label devoted to presenting high-quality recordings of music of all styles and from all periods from the twelfth century to the twenty-first.

Hyperion offers both CDs, and downloads in a number of formats. The site is also available in several languages.

Please use the dropdown buttons to set your preferred options, or use the checkbox to accept the defaults.

Don't show me this message again

Piano Sonata in C minor 'Pathétique', Op 13

Introduction

Beethoven’s C minor Sonata Op 13 appeared in 1799, with a title-page proclaiming a ‘Grande sonate pathétique’. The name is unlikely to have originated with Beethoven (his autograph score has not come down to us), but he may at least have approved it. This was the first of his piano sonatas to begin with a slow introduction, and the sombre Grave, with its musical discourse dramatically punctuated by ‘stabbing’ full-blooded chords, is entirely built around the rise and fall of its opening phrase. (Is it coincidental that the phrase was echoed nearly a hundred years later by Tchaikovsky, in the first movement of his ‘Pathétique’ Symphony?)

The notion of bringing back the Grave’s material at its original slow tempo at crucial points during the course of the Allegro was something new to Beethoven’s style, and it heralds the similarly integrated use of a slow introduction in the ‘Les Adieux’ Sonata Op 81a, and in some of the late string quartets. But the ‘Pathétique’ unifies its contrasting strands to an unusual degree, and the start of the movement’s central development section presents the introduction’s initial phrase transformed into the rhythm and tempo of the Allegro.

The Allegro begins with a staccato theme that spirals upwards, above the sound of a drum roll deep in the bass. In order to maintain the tension during his contrasting second theme, Beethoven has it given out not in the major, as would have been the norm, but in the minor; and the eventual turn to the major coincides with the arrival of a restless ‘rocking’ figuration, which far from alleviating the music’s turbulent atmosphere, serves only to heighten it. With the development section, and its abbreviated reprise of the slow introduction, Beethoven returns to the minor and does not depart from it again. The music’s continual agitation is halted only by the final appearance of the introduction, now shorn of its assertive initial chord, and sounding like an exhausted echo of its former self.

The slow movement forms a serene interlude in the key of A flat major. The sonority of its opening bars, with their broad melody unfolding over a gently rocking inner voice, is one that was much admired by later composers, and the slow movement of Schubert’s late C minor Sonata D958, whose reprise has a similar keyboard texture, provides one instance of a piece that was surely modelled on Beethoven’s example. Schubert also follows Beethoven in absorbing the rhythm of the middle section’s inner voice into the accompaniment when the main theme returns.

The slow movement’s key exerts an influence on the rondo finale, whose extended central episode, almost like a miniature set of variations in itself, is in A flat. Sketches for the finale appear among Beethoven’s ideas for his string trios Op 9, and since those preliminary drafts are clearly conceived with the violin in mind, it is possible that the sonata’s rondo theme was originally destined for the last of the trios, also in C minor. As so often with Beethoven, these initial thoughts show him trying to hit on a suitably dramatic way of bringing the piece to a close. That close is effected both in the sketches and in the sonata itself by means of a gentle fragment of the rondo theme, followed by a peremptory final cadence.

Recordings

Steven Osborne has been performing Beethoven live in concert for many years, always to great acclaim. Now for the first time he has committed these extraordinary performances to disc. It is clear from listening to the opening movement of the ‘Moon ...» More

'The Pastoral sonata leads off Angela Hewitt's second Beethoven sonata cycle instalment, and she taps into the music's overall geniality while also pa ...'Hewitt's fluent pianism … there's no shortage of imaginative touches in Hewitt's performances of the Pastoral sonata' (BBC Music Magazine)» More

Details

Two years previously, Beethoven had published his Sonata in C minor, Op 13 as his ‘Grande Sonate Pathétique’, this time giving the title himself. What exactly did he mean by ‘Pathétique’? He himself never said (or at least we have no record of it). The modern meaning of the word, which along the lines of ‘pitiable’, can only be used as a joke (as we did at music school, saying that so-and-so was playing the ‘Pathetic Sonata’). The word comes from the Greek ‘pathos’, meaning suffering, experience, emotion. But as William Behrend says in his book on the Beethoven Sonatas first published in 1923 (for which Alfred Cortot wrote an introduction), ‘it should be understood in an aesthetic sense, as the expression of exalted passion’. Behrend goes on to say how Vienna at the time followed Paris in adopting ancient Rome and Greece as models, even in fashion (it is true that Beethoven himself had a haircut à la Titus which ‘stood up around his head’, as Czerny put it). Beethoven was familiar with Plutarch, Plato, Pericles and Anaxagoras. He was also a great fan of Luigi Cherubini (1760–1842) whom he called ‘the greatest contemporary composer’. In 1797, two years before the appearance of the ‘Pathétique’, Cherubini presented his opera Médée in Paris (a passionate story of hatred, jealousy, and grief). The score of the opera was later found in Beethoven’s library. An article in The Musical Times of 1924 points out the remarkable similarities between themes in the opera and Beethoven’s piano sonata. Perhaps one of Beethoven’s most original compositions, and one which remains his most popular to this day, had its origins elsewhere? It certainly was something extraordinary for the time. Ignaz Moscheles recounts how after finding the ‘Pathétique’ in a library, he was warned by his teacher not to play or study such ‘eccentric productions’.

The first movement opens with a Grave introduction which is nothing less than a rhetorical gesture (‘rhetorical’ being another important word linked to the meaning of ‘pathétique’). Behrend describes it thus: ‘We are at once aware of the dignified, self-conscious throw of the toga with which the figures of the tragedy step forth upon the stage … while they impart to us the story of their fate and their sufferings.’ Once that is done, Beethoven launches into an Allegro di molto e con brio with drum-roll tremolos in the left hand, and a rocketing theme in the right. The second subject introduces some rather perilous hand-crossing which takes great control yet mustn’t sound cautious. I love Tovey’s advice on this movement, which I can’t resist quoting: ‘Remember that it is very unimportant whether you take six months or six years in screwing this Allegro up until you can break speed-records, but that it is very important for your own harmonious development that you should not play it badly at any stage of your practice.’

Then we have a problem to consider. Beethoven never indicated that the repeat of the exposition should return only to the Allegro section. This was added at a later date by a publisher. So perhaps he meant us to return to the very beginning and play the Grave once more? This is what I do (and what many other pianists, including Serkin, have opted to do as well). Considering the overall structure of the movement, each time Beethoven comes to a crashing pause in the Allegro, he then returns to the music of the Grave, so why should this first time be an exception? It makes the first movement longer, of course, but for me much more satisfying to play.

As with the previous sonatas, the Op 10 set, the Viennese publisher Eder issued an edition of the ‘Pathétique’ saying it was for either harpsichord or piano. Again, this is nothing more than a cunning marketing technique. As Michael Steinberg wrote in his wonderful notes to the Beethoven Sonatas, the second movement of Op 13 ‘must have sent the harpsichord owners running to the nearest piano store’! Nowhere is Beethoven’s famous cantabile playing more essential, more demanding, to the point where even the piano seems inadequate to produce what one wants to hear—a pure vocal line, or perhaps one played by a cello (given its low register). In fact, through most of this simple yet profoundly moving Adagio cantabile, I hear a string quartet playing. The triplets that Beethoven introduces in the second episode become a marvellous accompaniment and variation to the original theme, first played by one instrument, and then by two, creating a beautifully harmonious effect.

The concluding Rondo (Allegro) stays somewhat with this air of sophisticated simplicity. Wisely, Beethoven does not return to the dramatic scenes of the first movement (even he could not top that) but gives us a theme that is slightly reminiscent of his Third Piano Concerto finale (also in C minor). It is wistful, somewhat haunting, playing a trick on us at the end by presenting itself in A flat major. But Beethoven ends defiantly in C minor, leaving no doubt as to the nature of the sonata as a whole. It is said that he himself played this movement ‘humorously’ which seems to be at odds with the overall character. Maybe there is some explanation in Mark Twain’s remark: ‘Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of Humor itself is not joy but sorrow.’

To finish this disc, I return to the young Beethoven, newly arrived in Vienna and going all out to conquer his public (see the notes on his early life in volume 1, CDA67518.). When he went there in 1792, his patron in Bonn, Count Waldstein, urged him to work diligently and to receive ‘Mozart’s spirit from the hands of Haydn’ (with whom he was to study—Mozart having died the previous year). In the end, the lessons, which began with the study of counterpoint, were not a big success. Haydn was busy with his own compositions and successes in England, and was ill-equipped to deal with the wild personality of the young Rhinelander. Beethoven learned more from studying Haydn’s music than from the man himself. Nevertheless, when the time came to publish his three piano sonatas Op 2 in 1796, the dedication was to ‘M. Joseph Haydn, Docteur en musique’ (referring to his honorary degree from Oxford).